So the cat is out of the bag… or the book is heading for the printers.
I met Gerard Van Vliet in December 2009 after he contacted me because of this blog. He had found it extremely difficult to get anybody in Iceland to talk to him, be it officials or ordinary people. I met him over a coffee and then we had dinner. He raised the issue of a book.
In De Telegraaf I am titled as an investigative journalist. I am not a Bernstein or a Woodward sitting in an Washington Post-esque newspaper office in Reykjavik. A media outlet of such credibility has never existed in Iceland and will not for the foreseeable future. My experience as a journalist is based on working for the local paper when in high school in Iceland and then two and a half year as the school newspaper editor at my university in Florida. And then I write this blog when I get inspired, angry or desperate enough to have an opinion on the fall out of the Icelandic banking collapse.
My interests in IceSave stem from working for Kaupthing for four years and remembering very well the environment from which the online account sprung. And also from currently studying towards a master’s degree in International Relations at the University of Iceland.
We are trying to tie things together for people like ourselves to better understand what is going on. What you might not know but can get an idea of by reading the book, depending on which side of the ocean you are sitting is the situation of the other party. Gerard and I immediately struck up an understanding. But it appears as if politicians and officials in Iceland and the Netherlands have approached each other as pests that hopefully disappear if they keep their eyes closed for long enough. And the IceSave saga is not merely interesting from the viewpoint of international politics, but also from the local level.
While the media in the Netherlands has been constantly sending over reporters to cover the story, the Icelandic media has been inundated with comment from local politicians and “experts” who can toe the line of Iceland as a victim. In the end, the story is somewhat more complicated than a bunch of vikings heading over to steal innocent people’s money. There are corrupt politicians, rabble rousers, greedy bankers, Russian connections and lax international and local regulations which needs to be considered.
And what seems to be most constantly overlooked is the effect on ordinary people. Suicides, despair, bankruptcies and retirement plans out the window.
The book is in Dutch and will be published in the Netherlands in the autumn. We are preparing an international edition and courting suitors in the publishing sector.
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July 26th, 2010 → 1:24 pm @ Dadi
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